Volvo designs magnetic roads for cheaper, simpler self-driving cars

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There are myriad visions for a future filled with self-driving cars. For example, there’s Google’s experimental driverless car bristling with sensors, as well as more modest systems that would only take over from drivers for short periods. The problem with more ambitious self-driving car technologies is the considerably higher cost, whether in public infrastructure (networked roads) or the smarts built into the vehicles themselves. Volvo thinks it has an idea that could make self-driving cars work with much less hassle. All we need is a bunch of magnets embedded in the road.

Volvo began developing its magnet-based smart car system after looking long and hard at the other proposals on the table. It’s not just the cost of advanced sensors, cameras, GPS, and LIDAR that make self-driving cars tricky, the reliability is also questionable. Electronic solutions are more prone to failure in general, but even more so when inclement weather strikes. A magnet? Well, that’s always a magnet, and it can be paired with other automated technologies to make a fully driverless car.

In order to test the idea of using magnetic roadways, Volvo actually built a 100-meter test track in Hällered, Sweden and raced a specially modified S60 down it at over 90 mph. Engineers lined the road with neodymium magnets (20mm x 10mm) and ferrite magnets (30mm x 5mm) in lines down the edges and middle of the lane. The company tested both embedded and surface installation, finding that magnets on the surface would be effective and easier to install. Although, either option is sure to cause headaches in the case of roadwork.

Magnetic sensors are nothing new, but at the speeds we busy humans often need to drive, existing hardware wasn’t sensitive or fast enough. Volvo engineers calculated a car would require at least 400 magnetic samples per second to remain on the straight and narrow — a regular magnetic sensor can only do about three readings per second, and even then only when it is within a few centimeters of the magnet. So Volvo decided to roll its own magnetic sensor rig with five sensor modules, each with 15 smaller Honeywell magnetic sensor pods. This rig was attached to the bottom of the car and was able to pull in 500 readings per second.

The system was able to monitor the car’s location to within 10 cm at 45 mph when telemetry factors such as speed and acceleration were figured in. You’d probably want the precision to be a little higher before taking your hands off the wheel, but you get a lot for your money here. The advanced sensor package on Google’s self-driving car has about $150,000 worth of sensors, but Volvo estimates its magnetic sensor package will add only $109 to the cost of a car when produced in large quantities. Volvo also claims installing magnets in typical two-lane roadways would cost an average of $24,405 per kilometer. If that sounds like a lot, it’s not actually bad in the context of self-driving technology. Of course, you could only use this system where the magnets had been laid down — Google’s car works almost anywhere right now.

As the technology for self-driving cars becomes a reality, we need to ask ourselves how smart the cars should be. Expensive sensor packages are great for completely controlling a vehicle so you can take a nap, but only in good conditions. A bit of ice or some fog could make things awfully sketchy. If we rely on magnets in the road (or some other passive tech) everything is more reliable, but possibly not as convenient. A networked on-board system can respond to traffic dynamically and provide detailed analytics. Magnets — they just keep you on the road. However, it might end up being more important to focus on what’s feasible than what’s clever in the end. Magnets could end up as part of a more advanced system that at least has a basic fallback mode when things go wrong.

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Dont think the magnets will happen in the west because the government only wants to take from the people not give to them.

The cost of google sensors are born by the consumer only.

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SuperTech

To the writer. I think you will be absolutely SHOCKED at how fast and how far those expensive sensor packages will drop in price. That said, I don’t see any reason why we can’t have both of these technologies available. Perhaps they can expand/improve the United State’s road ways while adding the magnets.

SouthernGent19

I want a self-flying car. Quit building roads.

Ivor O’Connor

Yes indeed. It can’t happen fast enough for me. I want them quiet. I want them fast. I want them now! Battery operated. Leave the roads for trucks hauling heavy freight. I don’t think we’ll start seeing flying cars until batteries are the norm in the car market. Which is probably 20 years off…

We’ll need self driving technology though. And I rather doubt we will see magnets in the sky to guide these self-flying cars.

Jeff Vahrenkamp

I think it should be obvious that the advantages of magnets in the road vs a LIDAR sensor in icy and foggy conditions are essentially zero. Magnets don’t tell your car when it’s about to ram into another car, nor help it steer when there is almost zero friction between your tires and the road. Knowing where the lanes are is pretty much the smallest and least problematic of the self driving car problem, since these would likely only be installed on roads which are going to be maintained and painted regularly anyways.

Mayoo

I saw a TV show about this technology like 5~8 years ago…

Glenn Scott

Magnets in the road has been around for a long time, and exactly how many states have implemented it? How many miles of highway have been retrofitted for magnetic drive?
The states do not want to spend money on things that make life easier, hence, the Google car.
Sure the Google car is expensive….right now. Like all things technologically advanced, the first ones are always expensive. Look at 70″ led televisions. As more of them are sold, the price will come down. As new advances are made, the price will reduce.
Magnets in the road has been around a long time, I don’t see it going anywhere.

Ivor O’Connor

This is a bad idea for countless reasons. Shocked Volvo is wasting their money on this.

Dennis

It most likely a tax right off, or the son of the President of Volvo designed it all. Who knows. Surely we want something that will be safe no matter where you are driving. Magnets will not be the answer.

mrkphil

Do you really think the republicans will allow the gov to spend 1 dime on magatized roads. Obama has been complaining about our infrastructure for years and he get no cooperation. it will never see the light of day.

Marco

I personally think that magnetized roads are just about the worst idea in the world for any type of automated driving. Some problems:

– Will only help you in places where they have been deployed.
– Will only help you stay in the lane, won’t assist you with stopping for objects/cars.
– Lanes are often diverted/re-striped temporarily for road work, this would be a nightmare.
– Useless when the road is snow packed and the magnets can’t be read.
– Snowplows can easily rip huge amounts of these out every winter, resulting in safety issues and chips of neodymium magnets polluting the side of the road.
– Good luck convincing cities, HOAs, parking lot owners to install these everywhere.
– Etc.

No, right now people are the drivers, the world is built around that. We need a people replacement/augmentation, not a road replacement/augmentation.

I also feel like many people feel that an automated car can only be released if it is perfect and guaranteed to never mess up and have an accident. I, for one, feel like they should only have to be as good as people for us to accept them, and they can improve after that. After all, we’re not all clamoring for a law to permanently revoke the license of anyone who makes any mistake at all, right? If we can have the same accident rates that we have now, by using automated cars, but gain the convenience of not doing the driving, is that a bad thing?

On the other hand, if we can significantly improve accident rates (though not totally eliminate them), by adopting less-than perfect self-driving technology, shouldn’t we push to adopt it as soon as possible? I would rather adopt imperfect autonomous vehicles now and save 5000 lives per year, than wait 20 more years until we perfect the technology.

ackthbbft

This begs the question: Magnets, how do they work??
#obligatory

Mo Friedrich

Your hashtags have no power here.

Ian Skinner

wouldn’t work for 99% of Canada, ground frost, extreme temps and frankly union standardized road construction from the 70’s will put these sensors out of spec in 2 years easy.

http://batman-news.com John Schuimtz

There are a number of issues here:
This technology was demonstrated as part of the US FHWA Automated Highway System R&D some years ago. Magnets were embedded in the road on a section of California highway and proved the technical feasibility but left concerns about cost, achieving ubiquity,etc. unanswered.
As mentioned by other magnets only provide lane keeping guidance, nothing for crash avoidance.
Connected vehicle technologies add capabilities to warn of conditions ahead and of impending safety hazards.
Also as mentioned by others the cost for the technologies used for automated driving assistance and self driving vehicles is decreasing and will continue to do so.
This approach pushes costs from the vehicles/owners to the infrastructure, i.e. tax dollars.
What happens to surface mounted magnets when the snow plows come?
In many areas roads are resurfaced regularly thus requiring reinstallation of the magnets (adding cost).
Again as others pointed out, to be effective the magnets need to be fairly ubiquitous both in the infrastructure and across vehicle manufacturers.
These are some of the reasons the industry started focusing more on visual technologies for lane keeping rather than magnets.

Barry P

There ya go, anytime you needed a magnet, you could just go dig one out of the asphalt. I wonder how many you could remove before bad things started to happen ?

Datruf

While it is a possible solution, it’s impracticability buttress the idea that self-driving cars will need to adapt to the real-world environment not the other way around.

Just in the United states alone there are roughly 3.9M miles of roads, so at about $67.2K per mile the US wide installation would be more than $262 Trillion dollars, and that’s assuming it could be done so rapidly as to not run into replacement life-cycle costs before the project was finished. for comparison, the total values of all good and services produced in the US (GDP) for 2013 was about 15.6 trillion.

Once installed what are the replacement / maintenance costs?

What happens in areas using snow-plows?

What kind of transportation disruption would occur during installation?

Will some loon file a lawsuit saying magnets cause cancer or sterilize bugs etc requiring years and years of environmental studies, reports and legal fees?

etc, etc. etc

Tony

We have a program known as the BiModal Glideway which is perfect for personal use as well as commercial and public transportation! You can watch our short video at Youtube just search BiModal Glideway or at facebook/BiModalGlideway you can also follow us on Twitter @BiModalGlideway take a minute to watch the video give us some feedback on what you think!

Dennis

Were does all these magnets end up at? After the road is repaved or moved? We are talking about millions and millions of magnets in our roads. Can we even make that many?

what other brain wave are they going to come up with this would take hundreds of years and what else are they going to come up with that is just so stupid delaying in the self driving car is delaying people being killed on the roads.

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